BN's victorious in Pengkalan Pasir...

By unofficial count, it seems like the BN candidate won the recently held Pengkalan Pasir by-election by a razor-thin margin--129 votes exactly, or at least not until the recount is over.

BN's Hanafi Mamat got 7,419 votes, while his PAS opponent, Hanifa Ahmad, received 7,290 votes. The self-proclaimed "people's fighter" (pejuang rakyat), the notorious "campus fundamentalist thug/bully" in the early '80s, the shameless Frog (si katak) only managed to garner 414 votes. Yes, I'm talking about THE Ibrahim Ali--the seasoned yet principally-challenged politician who changes political parties almost as frequently as he does his underwear. Yep, bagaikan lalang di tiup angin. Anyway, the Ibrahim Ali factor did not pan out the way PAS had hoped for; si katak simply failed to siphon enough votes away from BN to ensure PAS's complete victory.

Is this merely a continuing trend from last year's general election, that BN is on the ascendancy, riding on the massive wave of Pak Lah's appeal to sweep through the former northern strong-holds of PAS? I'd like to think that it's not but there seem to be no other explanations. And this election is in Kelantan, for God's sake! The PAS's holy land, the so-called Serambi Mekah, and not including the messiah-like quality of the state's most revered son, PAS's own Mursyidul-Am, Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat. And oh, Anwar Ibrahim's much-publicized and frenzied visit to campaign on behalf of PAS's candidate.

PAS's surprise defeat in Trengganu last year can, for the most part, be boiled down to economic calculus--well, the whole wang ehsan or oil royalty issue. Money does trump all else, even Trengganu's own demagogue, Hadi Awang. But what explains this losing effort in Pengkalan Pasir? Undi hantu (phantom votes) maybe? PAS already claim that there are about 3,000 BN votes unaccounted for i.e. undi hantu, and that PAS supporters had stopped three buses carrying these "pengundi hantu," according to its VP, Husam Musa.

Anyway, the only explanation I can offer is sheer confusion and the presence of disproportionately high number of dyslexic voters. Just look at the names of both the BN and PAS candidates: Hanafi Mamat vs Hanifa Ahmad.

Tell me you're not confused!

p/s: One fact remains: Pasir Mas (the district Pengkalan Pasir is a part of) has the most beautiful girls per capita in all of Malaysia, hands-down. Trust me, all those Mek Kelate over there are really something...